UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Most games, Courtney Vandersloot doesn’t need to score 20 points. She can, and did twice in 2023, but it’s not the reason she signed with the Liberty in February as the final piece of their superteam.
They needed Vandersloot for scenarios such as their semifinals series against the Sun, whose defense and unrelenting pressure could only be cracked by pushing the pace. They needed her to distribute and facilitate so Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and others could operate with space.
Vandersloot’s 8.1 assists per game led the WNBA during the regular season, and she added another seven — along with 12 points — in the Liberty’s win Friday that moved them within one victory of the WNBA finals. She can spot players who will eventually open multiple passes or moves ahead of time, Oregon head coach Kelly Graves, who coached Vandersloot at Gonzaga, told The Post.
It’s a different role than the one she held in college, when she became the first player (with Ionescu later becoming the second) to top 2,000 points and 1,000 assists. But it’s exactly what the Liberty superteam requires.
“She’s the key to them,” Graves said. “Those others — Breanna and Jonquel [Jones] and Sabrina — deserve all the attention that they get, because they’re phenomenal players, but it works because of Courtney, and that’s why I think she was the perfect fit there with all those All-Stars.”
Still, Liberty coach Sandy Brondello didn’t want Vandersloot to remove herself as a scoring option altogether. She wanted her to take shots if they were open, Brondello said before Game 3, and with Connecticut trying to eliminate Stewart with Alyssa Thomas and Ionescu with Rebecca Allen, that allowed Vandersloot to pour in 19 points Tuesday — which featured a trio of 3-pointers for just the third time this season.
Vandersloot strung together consecutive baskets in the first quarter Friday, including one where she poked the ball away and finished a transition layup.
Sometimes, Vandersloot said, the Liberty can’t run their plays against the Sun. They just rely on moving and cutting backdoor, with their shifting and cycling as the antidote for Connecticut.
The space near the basket, Vandersloot added, sits open if the Liberty can maneuver past the initial pressure.
“Sometimes, we have to break a play to make a play, just because they’re pressuring so hard,” Vandersloot said.
She’s a transition “maestro,” Graves said. Vandersloot had 10 assists and no turnovers in her first collegiate game, and he recalled how former Liberty and Gonzaga guard Katelan Redmon admitted Vandersloot always concluded she was open before Redmon even realized it herself.
Eventually, Vandersloot transitioned her court vision to the WNBA. She set the single-game record with 18 assists in 2020 — boosting her career-best 10.0 average that year — and averaged another 8.6 the following year en route to the Sky’s WNBA title.
But then a day arrived that Vandersloot had never planned for. Vandersloot revealed that she planned to leave the Sky — the only WNBA team she’d ever played for — and shift to another franchise in free agency, and she called Graves to ask if he thought she could play with Ionescu.
The Liberty had drafted the guard No. 1 overall in 2020, and Ionescu had been their facilitator the past three seasons while concurrently emerging as their go-to option on offense.
Vandersloot wanted to make sure it’d work. She wanted Graves to call Ionescu, another one of his former players, and check. So he did, and he reported back with the answer: “Well of course. We would love to have her.”
Vandersloot hinted during her introductory press conference that everyone would have to cede something for this to work. The Liberty had other options to dribble the ball upcourt, but Vandersloot was still the facilitator. She’d score the points when ideal, or she’d fly under the radar with the assists, too.
Then, and only then, would the superteam start to blend together.
“Courtney’s the kind of player that’d fit in anywhere with anybody,” Graves said.